Dollyrots – "Because I'm Awesome" (2007)

I’m on your speed dial

The one everyone wants to meet

’Cause I’m awesome!

When I came of age a half-century ago, the best movies were infinitely better than the best television shows.

If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is take a look at Easy Riders, Raging Bulls – Peter Biskind’s book about the many great movies that were released in the 1970s.

We’re talking The Godfather (parts I and II), The Last Picture Show, Five Easy Pieces, The French Connection, The Wild Bunch, Mean Streets, Shampoo, Clockwork Orange, The Conversation, Badlands, Days of Heaven, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, Star Wars, American Graffiti, Chinatown, Carrie, Slap Shot, Vanishing Point, Bad News Bears, Breaking Away, Manhattan, and Rock ’n’ Roll High School – to name just a few.  

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The hour-long episodic dramas that dominated network schedules in the 1970s couldn’t hold a candle to movies like those.  But the long-form cable-network series that began to appear around the turn of the century – such as HBO’s The Sopranos, which first aired in 1999 – have an inherent advantage over the typical movie. 

The typical movie is about two hours long.  But the typical TV series has eight to twelve hour-long episodes per season – and the best series continue for four, five or even more seasons.

That additional time allows for more complicated and intriguing plot lines.  More importantly, it allows for more interesting and multidimensional characters.

Comparing a movie to a great TV series is like comparing a short story to War and Peace or any other great novel.  Less may be more when it comes to modern architecture – but less is definitely not more when it comes to books and TV series.

A few of the series that prove the truth of that statement beyond the shadow of a doubt include The Sopranos, The Wire, Homeland, Line of Duty, Orange Is the New Black, Happy Valley, The Night Of, Godless, the Danish/Swedish edition of The Bridge, the first three seasons of Fargo, and – last but certainly not least – Succession.

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Of course, length alone does not guarantee that a television series will be great.  For example, consider the Showtime series Billions – which I just finished watching.  

The producers of Billions spared no expense when it came to production values.   And its cast of performers was second to none in terms of either quality or quantity.  But the scripts for the show’s final season were a mess – both on a micro and a macro level.         

The next several installments of 2 or 3 lines will explain just how the final season of Billions jumped the shark.  

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It didn’t take me long to identify the official 2 or 3 lines record of the year for 2025 – ’cause I’m awesome!

I first heard “Because I’m Awesome” on the soundtrack of the initial episode of the seventh and final season of the Showtime series, Billions.

“Because I’m Awesome” was released on the Dollyrots’ second studio album – Because I’m Awesome – in 2007.  It’s been featured on the soundtrack of a number of movies and television shows in addition to Billions.

Click here to listen to “Because I’m Awesome.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.